Kellman, Barnet

Mad About You - The Complete First Season

Peopled with lovable characters in both achingly real and hilariously unreal situations this smartly written sitcom showcases a Manhattan couple trying their hardest to keep love alive in the midst of all the mad mad mad mad madness that modern marriage can bring!System Requirements:Starring: Paul Reiser Helen Hunt Carol Burnett Hank Azaria Carroll O'Connor Richard Kind Running Time: 245 Min. Copyright Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396096523 Manufacturer No: 09652

Mad About You - The Complete Third Season

One of the rare series about a happily married sexually active and in-love couple "Mad About You" enjoyed excellent writing and obviously two very winning lead actors.System Requirements:Run Time: 570 minFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396176577 Manufacturer No: 17657

Four years after Mad About You's complete second season was released on DVD (and two years after a highlights collection seemed to signal the end of season-by-season releases), the complete third season of everyone's favorite neurotic couple is finally on DVD. If Paul (Paul Reiser) and Jamie (Helen Hunt) Buchman don't drive each other nuts, they'll do it to their British neighbors, or the whole building, such as when an attempt to steal cable TV goes awry ("Pandora's Box"). Not to mention their whole crazy cast of characters, including Jamie's useless sister Lisa (Anne Ramsay), Paul's shifty cousin Ira (John Pankow), Paul's parents (Cynthia Harris and Louis Zorich), Jamie's parents (Theresa Fuller and John Carlin, replaced in later years by the stunt casting of Carol Burnett and Carol O'Connor), the building super (Jerry Adler), Jamie's best friend Fran (Leila Kenzie), and supremely clueless waitress Ursula (Lisa Kudrow). Some of the episodes had appeared on the highlights collection, such as the zany Thanksgiving dinner ("Giblets for Murray"), Paul's reality TV show in which he turns the camera on Jamie and himself ("Our Fifteen Minutes"), and Carl Reiner's appearance as a TV legend ("The Alan Brady Show"). But others are finally seeing the DVD daylight, including "The Ride Home," in which Paul and Jamie take a cab ride and recount, from different perspectives, how Fran's birthday party turned into a disaster involving guest stars Wendie Malick and Eric Stoltz. In the two-part "Mad About You," they flash back to the preparation for their wedding, and Paul flashes back to birthdays from hell in "Cake Fear." Cyndi Lauper returns as Ira's ex-wife (a guest appearance for which she won an Emmy, as did Reiner) in "Money Changes Everything" and Stoltz turns Jamie into a comic-book character ("My Boyfriend's Back"). Then in the two-part season finale, they're transported It's a Wonderful Life-style into a world in which they'd never met ("Up in Smoke").

Does it matter that the set has no bonus features? Maybe not so much. The bells and whistles of the Mad About You Collection were nice, but they don't compare to having a complete season's worth of episodes on DVD. We want Paul and Jamie, with their hilarious and touching quirks and chemistry, just as we watched them on TV. That's all we're saying. --David Horiuchi

Mad About You - The Complete Second Season

Peopled with lovable characters in both achingly real and hilariously unreal situations this smartly written sitcom showcases a Manhattan couple trying their hardest to keep love alive in the midst of all the mad mad mad mad madness that modern marriage can bring!System Requirements:Stars: Paul Reiser Helen Hunt Carol Burnett Hank Azaria Carroll O'Connor and Richard Kind. Running Time: 554 Min. (total). These episodes are presented in "Standard" format. Copyright 2003 Columbia TriStar.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating:  UPC: 043396009394 Manufacturer No: 00939

Murphy Brown - The Complete First Season

The DVD release of Murphy Brown is particularly newsworthy. There had never been anyone on primetime quite like Murphy, the star investigative reporter for the Washington, D.C.-based television news magazine F.Y.I. As created by Diane English and embodied by Candice Bergen, Murphy was, in English's words, "Mike Wallace in a dress." On camera, she was tough, smart, and relentless. Off camera she was intriguingly flawed. In the pilot episode, her character returns to work following a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic. Over the course of the season, her sobriety is supremely tested by the chaotic goings-on inside the funniest newsroom since WJM on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Murphy must contend with an unending parade of ill-suited, stressed-out secretaries (a running joke throughout the series' 10 years), new 25-year-old producer Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud) whom she rudely dismisses ("While I was being maced at the Democratic Convention in '68, you were wondering if you'd ever meet Adam West"), and new co-anchor Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford), a former Miss America ("by default") with no journalistic background. Murphy is over 40 and prickly, with a penchant for vindictive practical jokes against her colleagues. In short, in the words of a lampooning cartoonist in the episode "Funnies Girl," dynamic, "pain-in-the-butt," Motown-loving Murphy is "a veritable fountain of material."

With its smart and sophisticated writing and seamless ensemble, Murphy Brown instantly established itself as one of television's gold standard series, earning four Emmy Awards for this inaugural season, including Outstanding Lead Actress for Bergen and Outstanding Writing for English. Colleen Dewhurst was also honored for her guest appearance as Murphy's equally intimidating mother in the episode, "Mama Said." A cast and crew retrospective and commentaries by Bergen and English for, respectively, the pilot and classic flashback episode "The Summer of '77" earn this set R*E*S*P*E*C*T. --Donald Liebenson

Candice Bergen stars as Murphy Brown an outspoken TV journalist who along with her hilariously quirky cohorts of the top-rated newsmagazine show FYI struggles to handle personal and professional problems with humor and insight.Running Time: 535 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 012569596450

Once and Again - The Complete Second Season

After the romantic courtship and the awkwardness of first dates, Once and Again in its second season settled into charting the growing relationship between fortysomethings Lily (Sela Ward) and Rick (Billy Campbell), who finally shook off all their angst and family pressures to embark on a long-term relationship. And of course, once finally committed in their love for each other, life rudely interrupts what should have been a comfortable, winding road to happily ever after. Rick's architecture firm is hand-picked for a new high-profile project, but it's dogged by community protests and run by the ever-devious Miles Drentell (David Clennon, reprising his shady character from thirtysomething); what's more, Rick's ex-wife, Karen (Susanna Thompson), is the lawyer representing the project's opposition. Lily finds herself as the assistant to a twentysomething entrepreneur at a fledgling dot-com, and the victim of the amorous, non-professional interests of a consultant for the troubled company. She's also faced with the fate of her late father's restaurant, run by her ex-husband, Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), who's charming but not the best of businessmen, and his financial strain soon becomes hers as well. Oh, and then there are the kids: Rick's son Eli (Shane West) would rather start a band than go to college, and daughter Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood) may be anorexic; Lily's daughter Grace (Julia Whelan) falls into a friendship with a troubled girl, and only Zoe (Meredith Deane) seems to be the most normal--that is, when she isn't worried about Rick and his kids moving into her house.

The course of true love never did run smooth, and truth be told, there were a bit too many plot twists cooked up for this season of the Edward Zwick-Marshall Herskovitz drama (including a hostage episode at Jake's restaurant that garnered high ratings), but the creative team behind this show managed a deft balancing act among all the characters and plotlines. Teenage angst co-existed alongside more adult worries, and the specter of professional and money troubles for both Rick and Lily kept the characters grounded in a reality not often seen in television dramas. And in addition to giving all the cast members shining moments, Once and Again developed an extensive number of secondary characters, including Lily's mentally ill brother Aaron (Patrick Dempsey), Jake's flighty girlfriend Tiffany (Ever Carradine), Karen's hunky younger boyfriend (Mark Feuerstein), and an uncredited Edward Zwick as Jessie's therapist. It was the core cast, however, that made Once and Again soar--teen actors West and Whelan broke their characters' stereotypical molds, the young Wood (who would go on to star in thirteen) was outstanding as she navigated blooming adolescence: Nordling and Thompson, as the exes on the periphery, were two of the best supporting actors ever on television. As always, though, Ward and Campbell were the show's heart and soul, always communicating the underlying waves of frustration and anger in their character's facades as well as the love and happiness. Despite low ratings, ABC renewed Once and Again for a third and final season, giving all us fans of great television (and hopeless romantics) one more year with Rick and Lily after this one. --Mark Englehart

Golden Globe(R) award-winner Sela Ward and Billy Campbell star in the highly acclaimed second season of ONCE AND AGAIN. Celebrate the loves and experience the triumphs and heartbreak that made ONCE AND AGAIN a favorite among critics and audiences everywhere. It's "a great show," raves Robert Bianco of USA TODAY. Now you can experience all 22 episodes of season two in this spectacular five-disc set, featuring exclusive bonus features. It's everything you remember and so much more.

The Mad About You Collection

In the early to mid-1990s, Mad About You was about as good as sitcoms got. As newlywed couple Paul and Jamie Buchman, stars Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt crackled with rapid-fire wit, and a chemistry that created some genuinely moving moments. The Mad About You Collection is a set of 21 highlight episodes from all seven seasons; Reiser and Hunt selected the episodes and introduce each with a 4- to 6-minute Q&A. From the first season are the pilot and the story of how they first met. From the second season are Paul's encounter with Christie Brinkley in a virtual-reality investment opportunity and the recap of the marriage proposal. From the third season are the zany family Thanksgiving dinner in which Murray the dog eats the turkey, Paul's attempt to create an "honest" 15-minute film about a day in their lives (this was before the reality-TV craze), and Carl Reiner's guest appearance as a TV legend. From the fourth season are Yoko Ono playing herself and the three-part finale in which some hints of infidelity lead to serious marriage problems. Mel Brooks appears as Uncle Marty ("Firm embrace!") in the fifth season, and Bruce Willis makes a goofy guest appearance in the two-part season finale, "The Birth."

It's well-known that TV series that try to keep themselves relevant by making momentous changes usually go quickly downhill (a phenomenon known as "jumping the shark"). In Mad About You's case, it was the birth of baby Mabel, or perhaps it was that the lead characters' neuroses simply began to wear thin. Either way, the later seasons became more erratic, and it might not be a great loss to see only a few episodes from them. The selections from the sixth season focus on Jamie and Paul writing letters to Mabel, and Paul directing his parents in The Pirates of Penzance while Jamie battles postpartum depression. In the seventh-season episodes, Paul and Jamie ask their therapist about resuming sexual activity, they try to teach Mabel to go to sleep by herself, and Paul runs over his mother-in-law. Then in the series finale, Janeane Garofalo plays a grown-up Mabel telling how her parents discovered they weren't really married, and what happened over the following years.

In addition to the episode intros, the set's bonus features are enjoyable and informative commentary tracks by the two stars on the first and final episodes, a blooper reel, and featurettes on the guest stars and the theme music (you can see Reiser playing the piano). The involvement by the stars might appease the frustrated fans who bought the first two complete seasons on DVD then waited in vain for the third. DVD fans have become accustomed to having complete seasons, because no matter how well highlight episodes are selected, some favorites are bound to be missing (how about the what-if-they-hadn't-met episode, or the Rashomon-like taxi ride?). On the other hand, the previous sets had no bonus features, and a fan boycott that results in poor sales might mean no more Mad About You DVDs at all. That would be a shame, for even with its shortcomings, The Mad About You Collection reminds us that the series had a special ability to make us laugh and cry. --David Horiuchi

Honored with several awards including 10 Emmy®s long-running Mad About You is one of TV's most beloved and popular comedies. Mad About You explores the romantic ups and downs of an endearingly neurotic couple Paul and Jamie Buchman as they cope with marriage mood swings love and life. Co-stars Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser have personally selected their favorite episodes to create this inspired collection. You'll experience the ultimate in laughs and entertainment with shows featuring celebrity guests Lisa Kudrow Carl Reiner Sid Caesar Estelle Getty Bruce Willis Hank Azaria Cyndi Lauper and more. This is truly the ultimate collection for everyone who is mad about Mad About You.System Requirements:Starring: Paul Reiser Helen Hunt Running Time: 491 Min. Copyright Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396090774 Manufacturer No: 09077

Slappy & the Stinkers

Five second-grade kids who don't follow strict rules by their school principal Brinway are dubbed "Stinkers" by him. On the class visit to an aquarium, the Stinkers decide that a sea lion called Slappy doesn't feel too good there, "free" him, and plant him into Brinway's hot tub.

Ally McBeal - Ally on Sex and the Single Life

When Ally McBeal premiered on the Fox network in 1997, the series was already riding high on critical praise, with its upscale mix of savvy humor and hot-topic legal drama. Created, produced, and written entirely by the amazingly prolific David E. Kelley, the show immediately found an appreciative audience of women drawn to the title character's frank perspectives on dating, sex, and career objectives, and men lured by a cast full of attractive, outspoken women with vibrant personalities and flattering wardrobes. (If you think that's a sexist observation, you haven't tuned in to the show's brilliant balance of male chauvinism, feminist attitude, and hilariously turbulent office politics.)

This two-disc compilation of episodes from the show's first season is aptly titled, because Ally McBeal--a Boston lawyer played by Calista Flockhart--is defined by her seemingly perpetual singlehood, her sexual and emotional yearnings, her professional passions, and--by one of Kelley's creative masterstrokes--her flights of imagination (often visualized via amusing computer-generated effects) that give the series a constant, unpredictable edge of humor and emotional depth.

These well-chosen episodes offer a comprehensive summary of the first season's major developments, including the emotional history shared by Ally and her now-married colleague Billy (Gil Bellows); the notorious "dancing baby" (in "Cro-Magnon") symbolizing the insistent ticking of Ally's biological clock; the amiable quirks of John "the Biscuit" Cage (Peter MacNicol); and the dubious pearls of wisdom known as "Fishisms." Here we witness the sublime chemistry of the ensemble cast, and each member is given ample time in the spotlight. Regular guest star Dyan Cannon is strongly featured in "Silver Bells," prior to the second-season addition of Nelle (Portia DeRossi) and Ling (Lucy Liu). That leaves plenty of room to establish Ally McBeal as the lively focus of the series--confused, opinionated, sexy, neurotic, frustrated, ecstatic, intelligent, emotional... and never, ever boring. --Jeff Shannon

THEME OF LIFE-Ally agrees to see Dr. Tracy Clark(Tracey Ullman), John Cages therapist. Not only does Dr. Clark tell Ally to go ahead with her scheduled kickboxing match with Georgia, but she tells her to get a theme song, "something with bounce." Will this help relieve Ally's stress over a "real" case, defending an attractive doctor from a malpractice suit? Or is it just another chance to fantasize? THE PLAYING FIELD-Dr. Tracy Clark (Tracey Ullman) tells Ally, "You can't stand being liked for your sex appeal and you can't stand not being liked for it." Then she tells Ally to get rid of the dancing baby. Unfortunately, Ally kicks a 'little person' by mistake thinking it's her dancing baby.

Mary and Rhoda

Mary and Rhoda from television's The Mary Tyler Moore Show are finally reunited. Mary returns to her native New York City following the death of her Congressman husband in a rock climbing accident. Similarly, Rhoda returns to New York City from Paris where she has just recently left and divorced her husband, Jean Pierre. Both Mary and Rhoda are trying to deal with their college-aged daughters. Mary's daughter Rose is a student at New York University and Rhoda's Meredith is pre-med at Columbia. They now face the challenges of motherhood and reestablishing their careers in a very difficult time. Once again, Mary and Rhoda take on these challenges by trusting their intuition with that distinct sense of humor and sophistication they made famous in the original television series.

Once and Again - The Complete First Season

Rick (Billy Campbell) and Lily (Sela Ward) are fortysomething parents with two kids; both are still feeling the repercussions of their failed first marriages; both are haplessly single and consumed by their family identities (plus, let's just face it, both are gorgeous beyond belief). Dropping off their respective kids at school in their respective SUVs, they spy each other across a crowded driveway. Granted, it's not terribly romantic, but sparks fly and tentatively, embarrassingly, like teenagers, they embark on a first date--awkward conversation and fumbling make-out sessions in cars included. So begins the acclaimed TV series Once and Again from producers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the guys who brought you über-sensitive dramas thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. And like those award-winning shows, Once and Again mines the mundane and ordinary to find extraordinary drama, tackling both midlife crisis and teen angst, as Rick and Lily's kids (most notably heartthrob Shane West and blooming wallflower Julia Whelan) navigate the perils of high school while their parents traverse the mine field of adult romance, with ex-spouses and disapproving family members lurking in the shadows.

The first season takes Rick and Lily from first date alone to first date en famille, in which their respective broods finally meet and confront the fact that their parents--gasp!--like each other. Along the way, there's amazing writing, pitch-perfect direction that takes scenes from comedy to drama in seamless swoops, and a tight-knit ensemble that hits all the right notes. Ward won an Emmy for this first season as the anxiety-ridden Lily, but she's equally matched by the quietly stunning Campbell, and their interaction is touching, funny, sexy, and heartbreaking--everything you could want in a romance, and more. --Mark Englehart

Starring Golden Globe and Emmy Award(R)-winning actress Sela Ward and Golden Globe-nominee Billy Campbell, ONCE AND AGAIN explored brave new territory with the compelling story of two families blending at the seams. The second marriage of Lily Manning (Ward) to Rick Sammler (Campbell) pushes both to the limit as they try for domestic normalcy while navigating divorce, parenting, financial hardship, and many other life lessons. From the creators of THIRTYSOMETHING and MY SO-CALLED LIFE comes the complete first season DVD collection. Enjoy all the moving moments and memorable performances of a brilliant supporting cast, including Shane West (A WALK TO REMEMBER) and Evan Rachel Wood (THE UPDSIDE OF ANGER) once and again.